Peavey Classic 100 - for bass?

I've thought about it myself... I'm also kinda looking at classic 50 heads too.

 

I have one and it rocks! Its not my main bass head though. I have used it with a 215 Acoustic 406, SWR 410 and Peavey 412 and it was plenty loud with each. This head is switchable between 16, 8 and 4 ohm loads.

These heads are quickly becoming difficult to find.

 

I'm using my Peavey Triple XXX almost exclusively as a bass amp these days. No distortion, I just like the sound. 100 watts seems to be plenty if it's a tube amp, although I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem to run the preamp out into a large power amp if you needed more oomph.

 

Lets get an electrical engineer in here, while it will work, one EE told me once how u will kill the tubes, after we saw a dude doing it with a amrshall head, I believe you will probably make it hot enough to fry eggs.

 

I don't buy it, not in the slightest bit. plenty thinks lower than bass pumped through tube hifi systems for decades without killing the tubes.

 

Any signal can cause tubes to heat up, not just bass. Some people even like the sound of tubes pushed so hard they glow cherry red or yellow, and there are so many variables involved in this, from your instrument's frequency response, what eq settings you've dialed in, etc, down to the circuit topology in the amp itself and what make/model/vintage of tube you're using. Tubes have heaters inside them, for cryin' out loud! Some designs don't heat up much at all, and some don't sound good unless they're melting the Tolex covering the head.

Personally, since I play guitar as well, I just accepted that tubes heat up, and lose sound quality or burn out, then need replacing. It's a part of tube amp ownership, just as cleaning up puke and hairballs is a part of cat ownership.

 

I look at it this way, if I do blow it up I can guarantee I was having fun when it happened. I can't think of anytime I have ever had fun just looking at a piece of gear (that I actually owned mind you).

 

i didn't say it sounded bad, it sounded nice, but just questioned it

 

the ONLY problem with bass through ANY guitar amp is the shredding of lesser speakers. No harm can come to amp circuits from putting even sub contra basses through them.

MAYBE a guitar head purposely biased wrong to bring out brown sound mojo or some such gui**** stuff.... but they are set up faulty on purpose.

 

Is this just for tube, what about solid state? also what about keyboard amps

 

How low below a bass can an 88 key keyboard go?

 

My new setup includes a Peavey Classic 30 guitar combo. I run a line from my delay pedal into it but turn all the lows down to zero. I roll off the treble on the bass amp too. It sounds much better than I expected and the way the guitar speakers add a much bite-y-er tone is quite pleasent, especially with my 4003. I don't think this would be loud enough for a rock gig but for recording a low-volume practices is does fill the sound room nicely. Experimentation, experimentation, experimentation!

 

What about a Peavey Mace Head from the Mid 70s? Anyone ever use this for bass? 160w(!). Solid state preamp/Tube Poweramp (6 6L6 power tubes).

My friend has one and I used it once for bass, but with a Marshall guitar cab (w/ the volume really low of course). One of the tubes is blown (been so since he got it), and I told him he should replace it, but he refuses to; he still never even pulled it out of it's socket.

I wonder if this should be a concern, but he hasn't had any problems and he's loud enough as it is with 5 working tubes.

 

You should try disconnecting the internal speakers and hooking up an efficient bass extension cabinet.

 

He's going to screw up the amp big time . . . and each 6L6 puts out about 25 watts, so if it isnt loud, it isnt because its just missing that 25 watts, its because the things getting screwed

 

my friend bought a classic 50/50 power amp and used it bridged (100W) for bass. it sounded really nice. plenty of power if you have a big cabinet -- i don't think it'd be enough to make a 112 sound really big.

robb.